"Oh! it has my name on it," Janice admitted. "But I don't know a thing about it." She was rather frightened. Somebody had recognized her. Somebody knew she had run away and must be watching and following her. "Who—who put it here?" she asked the woman in the next seat.
"Why, you are actually pale, child!" laughed the matron, who had her own well filled lunch basket open in her lap. "You don't suppose it is an infernal machine? It looks like a box of lunch to me."
"Yes, I know," said Janice faintly. "But I can't imagine who could have left it here for me. It has my name on it."
"A brakeman left it," explained the woman. "Leastwise it was a man with a railroad cap on. Open it. I should not question the goods the gods provide. You found nothing fit to eat in that station, I am sure."
The train was already moving on. Janice sat down and opened the package. There was first of all a thermos bottle filled with hot tea. There were ham sandwiches—more satisfying as to thickness than delicacy, perhaps—a slab of plum cake and several solid looking doughnuts with a piece of creamy cheese.
It was more like a workman's lunch than one put up to tempt the appetite of a traveler; but Janice was hungry and she finally ate every crumb of it.
She examined the thermos bottle very carefully, searching for some mark upon it that might reveal the identity of the owner. Why! she could not even return the bottle, and it must have cost almost a dollar. She remembered that Marty had sent off to a catalog house for one like this and it had cost him eighty-five cents.
After she had eaten the hearty luncheon she went back and spoke to the brakeman. But he denied knowing anything about the package or having placed it in her seat. The forward brakeman made a similar statement. She even asked the conductor about it with the same result.
"I certainly would not worry about it, my dear," the comfortable matron behind Janice said. "Some friend of yours has played a joke upon you—and a very kind joke, I call it."
"Yes. But who?" murmured Janice Day, feeling much worried indeed.